The Scottish government has called for the decriminalisation of all drugs for personal use.
It wants the UK government to change the laws to allow people to be “treated and supported rather than criminalised and excluded”.
However it would still be an offence to have possession of drugs with the intention of supplying them to others.
The government also wants the law to be changed to allow the introduction of supervised drug consumption facilities.
Drugs laws are currently reserved to Westminster.
However, the Scottish government has responsibility for health and social policies around drug consumption.
Other proposals from the Scottish government include more substance checking services and increased access to emergency treatments for drug overdoses.
Aka the Portuguese approach. Over there anything less than 10 days supply is not considered a criminal offence.
I believe it’s mostly considered to be a successful policy.
Along with safe-use rooms or whatever they are called, it could have a really positive impact on people’s lives
Whilst this has been very effective at improving health outcomes for drugs users in Portugal, the drug dealers in Lisbon were incessant when we were there.
Seems like a sensible step and possibly free up public services a little for other things? Legalising and taxing feels like a good thing too, but maybe I’m being naieve. Overall though, good for society.
My biggest worry, and it’s such a selfish worry, is how it affects me. I’ve had neighbours (terrace and semi-detached) who smoke weed and it causes everyone’s house to stink. It’s a shitty experience and something you can’t do a lot about. Would that happen more and more with decriminalisation/legalisation? You can use whatever substances you like, but should I be affected by that choice?
I’m not sure I trust people to consider others, drugs or not.
Perhaps it’s the case that if there are specific ‘safe-use’ spaces, people won’t have to do such things in their own home and instead have other places to do - if people have somewhere where they can safely consume drugs and have medical help/supervision then theoretically the need to do that in private becomes unnecessary?
I see your point however as I only have a 20 minute daily commute and yet still often come across the smell of weed once or twice!
The safe space idea is interesting. Maybe there would be a correlation between the type of drug and risks associated with it and the use of those spaces. I’m not sure people would make the effort to go to a space to smoke when they can do it pretty safely at home.
I was thinking about this some more yesterday and ultimately land in the area of it’s a good sounding change and if it leads to some instances of antisocial behaviour, then let’s look at how we solve that afterwards. Were never going to find a single perfect solution to everything and meanwhile people are dying.
I can put my “what about me?!” problems to one side.
Decriminalisation is not the same as legal
